Detained Ugandan opposition figure Besigye is on hunger strike, his wife says

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) - A prominent opposition figure in Uganda who is on trial in a military tribunal has begun a hunger strike, his wife said, two weeks after the country's top court banned courts-martial from trying civilians.

President Yoweri Museveni said his government would continue to prosecute civilians in military courts despite the Supreme Court's ruling. A spokesperson for Uganda's prisons denied that Kizza Besigye was on hunger strike.

Besigye, a long-time opponent of Museveni, was detained in neighbouring Kenya in November, in what a senior Kenyan foreign affairs official described as an abduction.

He was subsequently brought home and charged with illegal possession of firearms and with treachery, which carries the death penalty.

"Kizza Besigye is on hunger strike, detained illegally by a regime that fears his defiance more than it respects the law," Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima wrote on X late on Tuesday.

"They think they can break his spirit, but they underestimate his resolve. (Besigye) will not yield while the regime tramples on justice," said Byanyima, who is the executive director of United Nations agency UNAIDS.

Uganda's prisons spokesperson Frank Baine denied the assertion regarding her husband, telling Reuters: "Besigye is OK and he is not on a hunger strike."

Besigye was Museveni's personal doctor during the 1980s bush war, but the two men later fell out.

Besigye ran against and lost to Museveni in four presidential elections. He rejected the results of all those votes, citing irregularities that the authorities denied.

Human rights activists have accused Museveni's government of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and arbitrary detention. The government has repeatedly denied allegations of election fraud and rights violations.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly and Gareth Jones)